THE POTATO — SAFFOED 529 



erick the Great with the best methods of potato culture. In the 

 second circular, which was published in full in the later number of 

 the Breslau Zeitschrift, the King advises that potatoes be planted 

 in the dark of the moon. He also indicates the proper time of plow- 

 ing, manuring, and planting the fields, cautioning the farmers that 

 if they plant small potatoes they will raise small potatoes, while 

 the best results will follow from the selection of large tubers, which 

 should be so cut as to leave an eye in each piece. He also instructs 

 them how to keep potatoes in straw-lined pits through the winter, 

 and that although potato patches do not need the same protection 

 from cattle and sheep as grain fields, yet care should be taken not 

 to herd swine in their neighborhood. After digging them, at Mi- 

 chaelmas, the hogs need no longer be kept away, but maj'^ be allowed 

 to rush in and eat their fill of the tubers left in the ground. The 

 circular ends with various recipes for the preparation of potatoes 

 as food for both man and beast. 



These circulars, enforced by local officials, had their effect, but 

 it was famine, caused by the Silesian wars, especially the Seven 

 Years War, which established potato culture in Prussia on a firm 

 basis. 



The introduction of potatoes into France was largely due to the 

 celebrated Antoine Auguste Parmentier, who, while a prisoner in 

 Germany, during the Seven Years War, was fed upon potatoes and 

 learned to like them. He was then serving as pharmacist in the 

 Hanover army, and during his hours of captivity he conceived the 

 idea of introducing potato culture on a grand scale into his own 

 country. Potatoes had hitherto been in bad repute in France, owing 

 to the attacks made upon them by physicians, who declared that they 

 were poisonous and were the cause of many maladies. A set of 

 colored woodcuts published in a series of educational pictures, called 

 the Serie Encyclopedique " Gluq, des Le^'ons des Choses Illustrees,-" 

 tells the story of Parmentier's success. After his return to France, 

 while serving as pharmacist at the Invalides, he entertained Ben- 

 jamin Franklin, Lavoisier, and other distinguished guests with a 

 great dinner at which the bill of fare consisted entirely of potatoes 

 served in various ways. Yet there were still learned agronomists 

 who declared that although the potato might be a good A^egetable it 

 would be dangerous to introduce it, for it would ruin the soil wher- 

 ever it was planted. Then Parmentier, to prove the falsity of these 

 assertions, obtained from Louis XVI permission to plant potatoes 

 in a piece of land called "Les Sablons," notorious for its sterility. 

 When in a short time the potatoes sprouted and this field, which 

 hitherto had been Imown only as a sandy waste, assumed the appear- 

 ance of a blooming garden, people began to believe that Parmentier 



=» 8ce Journ. Heredity, 16 : 222. 1025. 



